


Calm Me Down

by setoboo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Relationship, Set somewhere within Act 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 08:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3021146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setoboo/pseuds/setoboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders doesn't want to be seen like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> A little one-shot delving into Anders' mind during one of his 'down episodes.' This is set around act 2, before shit starts to gets real in Kirkwall. 
> 
> I know that it's pretty canon that Anders was either bi-polar. With his Awakening self having been a manic episode. Or having become slightly schizophrenic thanks to justice after their joining. Maybe he's got DID, maybe it's 'cheerful depression'. 
> 
> Maybe it's magic and labeling things is difficult. 
> 
> Anyways, I just wanted to write something from the perspective of someone who's on a 'down', and for him to have Hawke be there and understanding for him. I'm sorry if this comes off as wrong to anyone. I wrote it using my own experiences. Which lean more towards depression then schizophrenia, bi-polar, or DID.  
> \------------------------------
> 
> Calm me down  
> Calm me down  
> I'm inside out and upside down  
> Hold my head in your hands  
> To calm me down  
> Get it out  
> \- “Calm Me Down” MOTHER MOTHER

He didn’t notice she had returned until a gentle hand tucks an errant, greasy strand of hair behind his ear.

“Anders.” Hawke murmurs, voice as soft as her touch. 

He nearly flinches right out of the rickety chair he’s been camped in for…. Maker, he isn’t sure how long he’s been perched here. Hunched over the dilapidated desk in the back of his clinic and pouring his heart and soul into his manifesto. 

Considering the number of burnt out candles and emptied inkwells. Not to mention the truly staggering pile of crumpled papers and broken quills at his feet. He’s probably been sitting here working since she last left him.

He doesn’t want to know how many days ago that was. 

He turns towards her slowly. Not wanting her to see him like this. Not when he’s unwashed, dark-eyed, and shaking like some Templar in the late stages of Lyrium withdrawal. His visage certainly does nothing to dissuade the constant mutterings of that damned Elf, who will tell just about anyone that will listen that Anders will undoubtedly lose it any day now. 

“You’re back.” He means for the words to be a simple statement of fact. To sound chipper and mask how startled he is at her sudden appearance at his side. Unfortunately, his voice betrays him the instant it leave his lips. Coming out as little more than air. Desperate, thready air. He sounds like a man about to break and shatter, instead of a man happy to see his friend return safely.

Hawke smiles at him anyways. As if his voice hadn’t broken like some child’s. Her smile is small. Barely more than a quirk of her pink lips. But it’s undoubtedly tender, and makes her too-bright blue eyes go half-mast and crinkle slightly at the edges. She looks impossibly beautiful when she smiles like that. 

Maker’s Breath, he loves that smile more than he can possibly explain. 

“Of course.” She responds quietly, as if she realizes just how brittle he is right now and fears her voice any louder very well could shatter him. “We had some problems with the Coterie out on the Coast. I’m sorry I wasn’t back quicker.”

“Are you okay?” 

Anders doesn’t wait for her to answer. Panic, hot and heavy, pouring through his veins at the thought of what could possibly count as a ‘problem’ for Hawke. He curses himself to the void and back for not checking her the second he’d realized who had entered his sanctum. His eyes restlessly travel up and down her form. Looking for anything that might need immediate attention. He is distantly pleased, beyond his panicked haze, to see that her robes don’t have any obvious blood stains or rips in the material. The usual signs that a weapon or spell had made it past her defenses. 

Her hands come up suddenly and frame his face. Forcing him to stop looking for wounds and return his gaze to her still smiling face.

He tries not to melt into her warm palms, tries not to lean into the way her thumbs start to gently trace his cheeks bones. Maker he tries so, so hard to keep his shaking, ink-stained hands from covering her own lavender and elfroot scented ones. 

He somehow manages not to do any of that, but it does not feel like a victory. 

No, Anders feels very much like he’s punishing himself in the very worst way possible. Denying himself her and her touch.

But he is not strong enough to pull away from her hands. Not right now at least.

“Anders, I’m fine.” She admonishes lightly and continues to loosely cup his face, petting his cheekbones until the anxiety that had taken him subsides. “And you know. Just because I’m not the one running a clinic in Darktown doesn’t mean I’m a complete waste at healing either.”

He knows this. It’s one more thing to add to the seemingly endless list of things he loves about this impossible woman. Gentle hands, bright eyes, soft smiles, and a gift for healing that truly leaves him stunned at times.

Marian Hawke, the Fereldan Apostate with the compassionate heart and desperate need to help everyone and everything. Who somehow muddled her way into becoming a Spirit Healer by sheer force of will despite her lack of Circle training. Her abilities rival his own and he can only claim to be the ‘better’ healer for the unfair reason that he always has access to a spirit. Whereas she must wait precious seconds for one to answer her call.

No, he is very aware she is no slouch at healing. 

It doesn’t mean he worries any less about her though.

“I know you’re not.” He rasps. Eyes darting away from her piercing gaze, but unable to bring himself to pull away from her soft, steady hands. “It wouldn’t be the first time you overlooked yourself though, Hawke. You always heal everyone else first.”

She does it constantly. He thinks with an overwhelming mixture of fondness and distress. Hawke always heals everyone else first before she realizes she has been injured as well. Usually, by the time Hawke does deign to notice she’s been hit, she’s pouring blood, and out of magic to fix the damage. Leaving him to scramble to knit the wound closed before she faints from bloodloss. 

It’s happened more than once. 

“I’m sorry, Anders,” Hawke’s thumbs suddenly stop that lovely calming petting along his cheeks. It takes more control than he thought he had left to stop the pitiful whine that builds in the back of his throat from coming out. “I promise I’m getting better about watching myself.”

He’s about to toss back that she always says that. But before he can get the words out, her thumbs start to caress his cheeks again and he can’t help it.

He melts right into her hands with a choked noise of relief. 

Humiliation hits him hard in the pit of his stomach instantly. He can feel how effortlessly her thumbs glide on his face now, the movement too easy, too slick. He is caked in old sweat, and it has left him clammy and too heavy in his skin. Meaning her thumbs barely pull at his skin as they slide in soothing patterns along his cheeks. Hawke’s touch is warm and delicate, and Anders feels too rough in comparison. His stubble painfully coarse against her palms, his hair greasy and beginning to mat, and worst of all. He can’t stop shaking.

Anders doesn’t want to be seen like this. He doesn’t want to sully her hands with the filth that coats him. He doesn’t want the eye-watering chokedamp of Darktown to overwhelm her comforting lavender and elfroot scent. 

He wants her to leave before he ruins her.

But she’s smiling in that unfairly beautiful way. Her eyes too bright, and her hands too soft, and he aches for her to stay as much as his mind and Justice both scream she has to go. 

He swallows his humiliation, closes his eyes, and lets her continue to hold him. 

Hawke hums an absent note and steps closer to him. Anders is still hunched over in his chair, and though he normally is a good head above Hawke in height while standing, she currently towers above him. So he shouldn’t have been as surprised as he is when she bends down slightly and guides his head to rest against her chest. Right above the comforting thump thump thump of her heart. 

His eyes snap open as soon as he registers the feel of skin warmed cloth touching him. He’s frozen and unable to move. Forced to stare at the crumbling wall in front of him and the pale blue material in his peripheral. 

No...No. NoNoNo. He’s getting sweat and filth and grease all over her robes. He’s ruining them.

Anders can feel that he’s starting to shake harder. 

It all catches up with him at once. The gnawing pain of going days without a proper meal, the suffocating air of Darktown sitting heavy in his lungs, the lack of sleep, the filth covering him.

Maker, he used to take such pride in his appearance. How could he possibly let somebody see him like this?

How could he let Marian see him like this?

He thinks he’s going to shatter.

Hawke suddenly shifts him again so he’s pressed even closer to her, and one gentle hand starts to smooth his hair away from his face, tucking everything behind his piercing-less ears. She still has her other hand cupping his face, absently tracing his cheekbone.

The shift actually does help, he’s burrowed even deeper into her robes now. His nose pressed against warm blue cotton. He takes a shallow breath, as all breaths in Darktown must be shallow by necessity or you’re liable to choke on the smell. But this breath comes blessedly easier than any he’s had in a week. Instead of drawing in the noxious fumes of spoil and damp-rot that have been curdling his stomach for the past many days. All he smells is lavender and elfroot. Sweet healing scents that ease his nauseous stomach and helps some of his infernal shaking abate.

“Do you think you can stand?” Hawke asks quietly after he starts to breath easy and deep against her chest, her hands stilling where they sit on his face and hair.

It takes him a deplorable amount of time to answer. Which he can only blame on not wanting to move away from her fragrant robes and return to breathing Darktown’s black-air.

He certainly isn’t going to admit the sudden pause in her petting makes every muscle in his body freeze like she’s cast a Winter’s Blast underneath his skin. 

“Of course I can.” He finally replies after taking a deep breath of her scent and pulling away from her. He holds the breath as long as he can. Desperately trying to keep the relaxing scent of Lavender and Elfroot from being poisoned by his next inevitable gasp of air. 

Hawke’s hands burn trails of warmth into his skin as he forces himself to pull away from them. 

Anders only just manages to stop his own hands from reaching up to drag her milky digits back to his skin. Yearning for the return of her grounding touch. 

“Come with me then? I think a hot meal would do us both a world of good right now.”

“I don’t want…” The rest of the words die in his throat. There are so many ways to end the sentence, that he isn’t sure how to give the jumbled together thoughts a voice. ‘I don’t want to leave.’ Is a lie, he wants to get away from this desk, his clinic, and most certainly Darktown desperately. ‘I don’t want to go to the Hanged Man.’ Is closer, but not the heart of the problem. ‘I don’t want to be seen like this.’ Is the Maker given truth, and he wouldn’t say that to her for all the gold in Thedas. He can’t even begin to put words into the way anxiety hits him at the thought of being seen, unwashed and shaking, wandering the streets with her. 

She has just gotten the estate back, and been named nobility. Her already dubious reputation would be in tatters if the wrong people saw them associating. She’s in enough trouble trying to keep her status as an Apostate a secret with the Knight-Commander’s ever tightening grasp on the city. Wandering Kirkwall with someone as bedraggled looking as him would not end well for either of them.

But he can’t say that, because she will do the thing. 

He hates, and sort of secretly loves, the thing. 

Whenever he says something about being a danger to her, or she’s better off away from him, or anything to the same effect. Hawke will get very quiet and pull away. Like she’s finally going to listen to him and leave him alone as he deserves. Instead, she will grant him another of her heartrendingly beautiful smiles, and just....stay with him.

She won’t talk unless he does first, and she won’t touch him even though she’s a very tactile person. Hawke will just putter around the clinic making potions, or cleaning, or doing any number of mindless tasks that he should be doing instead of her. She stays with him in the Clinic until she’s out of things to do, or one of their friends comes by, asking for help with some task. 

Then she comes back the next day and does it again, and then again, and again. She comes back quiet and helpful for days on end, until he finally breaks down and hugs her or asks to join in on her next excursion. 

He hates that she won’t listen to him, even though he’s trying to save her.

He loves that she ignores his words and stays anyways.

“Not the Hanged Man.” Hawke promises. Obviously having picked up that he’s uncomfortable, but not entirely correct on the cause of it. “If we go through the estate cellar we’ll end up right by the kitchens, and everyone should be asleep by now.” 

She holds one hand out. An offer to help him out of the chair. A crutch if he can’t really walk and his words were all just bluster. A glaring invitation for him to join her for dinner, and knowing her, an offer of a bath and a clean bed afterward.

He should be able to resist this. But she is there, patient and beautiful. Waiting for him to make the final decision.

Calm and willing to help him in whatever way he will let her. 

Anders is a weak man.

He takes her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are welcome. Let me know if there are any glaring mistakes.


End file.
